Friday, November 28, 2008

Thursday, November 27, 2008

"x-tray;" "cd-scan;" "todo-echo." some of the funniest interpretations of filipinos to hospital jargon. niña, april and me are currently rotating in radio and idle time coupled with uncontrollable "kadaldalan" lead to some seriously funny and annoying (to others i bet) conversations. we have talked about everything from dead people on tables surrounded with flowers to yayas poking poop and mimicking sandy's now classic "looking busy" (an inside joke).

Edit: more funny stuff...ct-skull, phenobarbiedoll (phenobarbital), and metromanilazole (metronidazole). these are actual utterances from patients!

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

I always wondered how they became the symbols of the two parties. From Wikipedia...

In 1874, it was rumored that U. S. Grant would run for an unprecedented third term. As the rumors were surfacing, there was also a contemporary urban legend that several animals had escaped from the New York Zoo. Thomas Nast, the most popular and influential cartoonist of the time, took the opportunity to combine the two in a cartoon for The New Yorker magazine, representing the Republicans as elephants, docile but unmoveable when calm, unstoppable and destructive when excited. The cartoon, entitled "The Third Term Panic," depicted the Republican vote as an elephant running inexorably into a tar pit of inflation and chaos. Interestingly, the elephant was running away from the already established Democratic donkey, dressed in a lion's skin. This was Nast's take on the Democrats' view of Grant as Caesar, and their feeling that they had an obligation to play Brutus before he let the power of his office corrupt him.

The donkey predated Nast by three decades, when it was used during Andrew Jackson's campaign, initially by his opponents, calling him a 'jackass' for his populist policies. Well known as stubborn, however, Jackson decided to co-opt the mascot, and used it to his own advantage. After Jackson retired, he was still looked at as a party leader, even though the party refused to be led, and the 1837 cartoon "A Modern Baalim and his Ass" showed him leading a donkey which refused to follow. However, the donkey image was not popularized until the ubiquitous Nast adopted it, first depicting the party as a kicking donkey, attacking Lincoln's secretary of war Edwin Stanton even after his death in an 1870 cartoon for Harper's Weekly.

In other words, both animals were chosen for their negative qualities, such as stubbornness and willy-nilly destruction, and then adopted by the parties for their positive attributes, and neither party has been stubborn or destructive ever since.

surgery was the first specialization i really wanted to get into. during clerkship, i realized that i may not be made for it. given my back's condition coupled with the demands of the specialization for doctors to stand for a long span of time. a resident said to me... "then just operate sitting down..." yeah... then be called a wuss. will your co-residents and consultants take an excuse and not hack you off until you quit?

after going through surgery this internship, i have mixed feelings. i've seen the the good, the bad, and yes, the ugly. surgery is a fulfilling field. i liked what my friend sandy said why she wanted to go into surgery. you see results immediately. a guy has abdominal pain. he has acute appendicitis. you remove his appendix. his symptoms go away. poof! like that. in medicine, you wait for your medications to take effect. for the body to heal itself. and more often than not, things are not very simple. i guess that's why they joke that medicine takes brain and surgery just skills which is all very wrong.

i thoroughly enjoyed working at the east avenue e.r. especially that marco and i had a great resident (dr. varela) who was a friend and together with dr. montes (the rotator from another hospital) we all were food-addict buddies. ha!

working through orthopedics and urology subspecialties both gave me insights into their private worlds. orthopedics is an interesting field... and lucrative too. but it's a little down my list. i admit i did not get to do a lot during urology except make tarpaulins and and their video for their upcoming urology week but i did learn a few things most importantly how to do a proper urologic history. i will remember their names forever because of that video ha!

the outside rotations are really interesting too! at the philippine children's medical center, i realized that imperforate anuses are very prevalent more than hernia which i seriously thought would be more common (or it was just a hernia down week?). i got to see rare cases. i got to see a boy who had TWO PENISES. ehem. a newborn with a tumor larger than his head. at phil heart center, i realized these delicate surgeries are the longesssssssst types of surgeries. my my, i can't take them. but it was fun because i got to close a lot of graft sites! lung center was productive too for me, i got to insert four chest tubes on my own! at national kidney and transplant institute i got the best mentor in dr. ahalajal who taught me and let me(!) insert IJ catheters, who answered my questions, treated me as an equal and is a surgeon who (i hope for real) does not belong to the stereotype (more on this later hehe). thank you doctor.

i think i have said it here before but i'll say it again. not taking everybody but most of and not just a few of the nurses at national kidney institute are the most unprofessional, annoying, untalented of the nurses who work for the different centers. there i said it. i hate a lot of them. they are rubbish and are nothing compared to nurses at lung center who are their total opposite. they have a lot to learn. and age has nothing to do with it. there ARE good people there but they are truly outnumbered and i AM saying this as what is true to me. kudos to you lung center nurses i love you. and i am sure all the interns love you as well.

sigh... the year is coming to a close. and i'm excited and frightened about next year's board exam. i thank you marge for having so much confidence in me that i think i can do anything because of that. i hope i make you proud as i know you'll make me too.

watching something the other day in youtube, i loved the quote: "thought transcends matter" from george bernard shaw. barbra talking about it said the outer world mirrors what is within us, and we make happen those things we think about. i hope that all our dreams and wishes be realized and fulfilled with our thoughts, prayers and deeds.